The conference was organised by the Institutet f?r spr?k och folkminnen and the Society for Name Research. The conference received financial support from the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy for Swedish Folk Culture and the Place-Name Society of Uppsala.

The conference began on Wednesday, 02.04.2025, with official greetings and an introduction by the organisers, Daniel Solling and Michael Prinz, and the representative of the GfN, Barbara Aehnlich, in the Arkivcentrum of Uppsala University. This was followed by a presentation of the Uppsala place and personal name collections of the Institute for Language and Folklore. This gave the participants an idea of the conference venue and it seemed only right that the annual conference of the GfN should take place in Uppsala, a city with a long history of name research. As a guideline, the organisers assigned the presentations to various overarching topics, although it must be emphasised that many of the presentations could be assigned to several topics. This was therefore only a rough categorisation for orientation purposes. The programme began with presentations on the topic of ‘Names in multilingual contexts’. The presentations, which were held in both English and German, reflected the diversity of name research. Michelle Waldispühl opened the conference and spoke about the perception of ‘foreign’ personal names, with a particular focus on naming in Sweden. Gerhard Rampl spoke on a completely different topic in name research. He presented a corpus linguistic study on mountain names. His research, which uses the new possibilities of digitalisation and computer technology, including ChatGPT, looked at cultural and linguistic variability in onomastic analyses. 

Barbara Aehnlich and Kristin Loga then spoke about Bremen's multilingual place, district and street names. In addition to their research on the origins of toponyms, they also presented a seminar organised by Barbara Aehnlich at the University of Bremen. Here, students were able to take part in practical research as part of their bachelor's degree programme and, among other things, work independently on map material to gain an insight into research work. A presentation by Ingo H. Warnke, Thomas Stolz and Wolfgang Crom on Blue Toponomastics, the naming of geo-objects at the interface between land and sea, led to interesting questions and ideas for further work. For example, how were toponyms named in mudflats, where they are temporarily under water and temporarily on land, or those that are permanently under water? And do these also belong to the Blue Toponyms like the Cape names presented?

Although the lecture by Christian Lang, Sandra Hansen, Franziska Kretzschmar and Anna Volodina did not conclusively clarify in German whether ‘ein, eine or einen Kahlo’ is viewed in the museum when looking at pictures by female artists, this is a frequent and legitimate answer in such contexts: ‘This cannot be clarified with absolute certainty. It depends ...’. Among other things, the aspect of gender-appropriate language in naming was highlighted and discussed in a lively manner. The presentation by Michael Reichelt and Lisa-Marie Naparty also led to discussions and lively dialogue. Under the overarching theme of ‘Names and identity’, the speakers reported on using the Harry Potter novels to work with pupils on the topic of identity formation through names and to talk about prejudices when dealing with surnames. The idea met with much approval from the conference participants, but the question was also raised as to whether a novel with English names was at all suitable for German lessons. The enthusiasm of the participants for the topics was particularly evident in the time following each presentation, during which questions and comments could be made on the contributions. Each presentation was accompanied by several questions, ideas for further work and offers of co-operation.

The students' poster session was an interesting addition to the presentations. The students from Bremen, Mariell Nehls, and Bern, Lara Schaub, designed a poster for their Bachelor's theses and the student from Uppsala, Patricia L?rkefj?ll, for her Master's thesis. This opportunity for students to take part in the conference not only as listeners, but also as active participants at a low threshold, was enthusiastically utilised by all students. The subsequent reactions of the other participants confirmed the friendly and collegial atmosphere that prevailed during the conference. The GfN's commitment to getting young people interested in scientific exchange during their studies and showing them ways to actively participate should be emphasised.